I am used to studying armed violence in places like Afghanistan, but when it hits home, such experience does not make digesting the horror any easier. Although my work has taken me far afield from the Constitution State, no matter where I go, I am always a Connecticut Yankee. I was born and raised in Connecticut. Much of my family is in Connecticut. Connecticut is home, and I taught last year at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

It is time for the United States to move beyond the absurd Kabuki theatre and national Trauerfeier sentiment that follow every mass shooting. It should tell us something that we have to go to the Onion for that insight.

Although the investigation is at an early state, this most recent act of violence raises three interconnected issues that the United States needs to focus on. The primary discussion will be on the availability of guns in the United States. But to blame these violent acts simply on the availability of handguns is disingenuous.

There is no getting around the fact that lax gun control measures are a principal contributor to gun violence. In the US, in 2010, there were 12,966 gun deaths. Compare that to the most recent UK data in 2011, showing there were 58 gun deaths in the United Kingdom; even when the rate is adjusted for population, the number of gun-related deaths in the UK would only be 290 – nowhere near the US figure. In other western countries, where guns are similarly well-regulated, numbers are also low: in the Netherlands, the rate of gun deaths is 0.57 deaths per 100,000 people; in Germany, that figure is 1.16. The US rate is a whopping 2.98.

America's current patchwork of state laws and federal regulations is not adequately comprehensive, nor properly enforced to be effective in mitigating gun violence. A report produced by the organization Mayors Against Guns (pdf) offers strong evidence that weak control measures in states such as Kentucky and Virginia directly led to some 21,000 guns being used in murders elsewhere in the country.

As a registered Democrat, I find President Obama's record on this issue dismal. The only two laws the president has signed since 2009 that were related to gun control allowed weapons on Amtrak trains and permitted the carrying of guns in US national parks. He did not support a bill, introduced by Democrats in July 2012 following the Colorado shooting, regulating the sale of ammunition.

As a nation, we are reaping what we have sown. I do not expect, nor do I think it feasible that guns in the US will be banned, but we do need better regulation. The Founding Fathers did not write the second amendment to the US constitution to underwrite the slaughter of children in school.

Regulating guns is the simple answer; it is not the entire solution.

The common refrain, whenever one of these mass shootings occurs, often includes words such as "troubled" and "disturbed" applied to the shooter. Let's call it what it is: mental health.

Part of the problem here is that talking about mental health is shameful. Worries over social stigma mean individuals are unlikely to step forward to talk about their problems and seek help. We also need to address inadequacies in the law that makes it difficult to assist mental health patients before they commit a dangerous act.

The shooters in the aforementioned massacres all had severe mental health problems that were untreated or inadequately treated – yet they still managed to acquire firearms. Each one of these shooters in the United States acquired their guns legally. This is now a problem screaming for attention.

Finally, this tragedy is getting a lot of attention because 20 young children were killed in their classroom at a quiet, suburban school in Connecticut. High-profile cases such as this always get a lot of attention. But everyday in the United States, on average about 35 people are shot and killed with guns, especially in our inner cities.

This problem is especially acute in Connecticut, where we live in a semi-apartheid state of rich suburbs and quiet rural communities around decaying, crime-riddled cities such as Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven. For too long, we in suburban and rural Connecticut, as in many other states, have relegated inner-city violence to background noise on the TV news.

No one bats an eye as the newscaster reads off lists of murders and shootings in cities just a few miles down the road: it is surreal and we are foolish to think that these problems do not impact us in the long run. We should use these atrocities to address the systemic problem of gun crime in America, not just isolated mass shootings.

The NRA is right that "guns don't kill people, people kill people". We need to focus on people, through mental health programs, anti-bullying campaigns, poverty reduction and inner-city education, to address our national plague of gun violence. But better gun control laws are also part of the equation. To suggest otherwise, as the NRA does, is disingenuous at best, if not downright amoral.

We owe this to the kids in Newtown who will never go to high school and never have the luxury of debating that perennial high school debate question about the constitutionality of the second amendment.